Xu Yuzhuo and Xu Jiaqi are peers in the family, and they both serve in the Fujian Army, and their personal relationship is actually good. Pen Fun Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 info Shi Diwen also knew that although Xu Yuzhuo's tone was complaining, it was not serious, and he explained with a smile: "I only came to Penghu yesterday, and I left here today after a night's rest, how can your cousin have time to report to you." ”

Shi Diwen's visit to Zhangzhou was indeed not a planned itinerary in advance, and after he met with Qian Tiandun in Penghu, he temporarily came here to find out the news. If it was an official visit, it would definitely be through the Ming Army's channel to inform the Zhongzuo Institute in advance, but Shi Diwen didn't want to make this kind of meeting too official, and he didn't want to waste time on unnecessary processes, so he came directly to the Zhongzuo Institute. All Xu Jiaqi could do was to send someone over with the ship, so as to avoid many troubles such as checking the identity of Shi Diwen and his party when they entered the port in Zhangzhou.

Although Shi Diwen came suddenly, Xu Yuzhuo still prepared a table of reception banquet to entertain him in the shortest possible time. Shi Diwen was not in a hurry to mention serious matters on such an occasion, so he settled down and talked about the old feelings with Xu Yuzhuo and other Ming army officers, and drank happily together. In the end, Xu Yuzhuo also arranged two women to serve Shi Diwen to sleep very knowingly.

Shi Diwen traveled all the way for many days, and when he arrived in Penghu, he couldn't take a good rest and then went on a business trip, and his body was already exhausted, so he slept until noon the next day before waking up. After getting up and washing, Xu Yuzhuo came to invite him to lunch.

"It's okay to eat, don't drink wine, I'm still dizzy after last night's meal. Shi Diwen knew that this Xu Yuzhuo was a person who did not drink and did not like him, if he followed his wishes, he could drink three meals a day. Although he came here to meet Xu Yuzhuo in his personal name, there were actually a lot of official matters to discuss, and Shi Diwen didn't want this kind of drinking game to interfere with the business he wanted to do.

Shi Diwen insisted on not drinking, and Xu Yu would not persuade him reluctantly. After lunch, Xu Yu clumsily ordered someone to remove the banquet and replace it with hot tea, and then began to talk to Shi Diwen about business: "General Shi suddenly came this time, presumably in addition to visiting old friends, there must be other missions in him, right?"

Shi Diwen nodded and said: "You and I are old friends, and I won't hide it from you, this time I am transferred to Penghu to take over the fleet stationed in Penghu and Taiwan, and I may stay here in Fujian for a period of time in the future." ”

Xu Yu said clumsily: "That's good, in the future, in this Zhongzuo Institute and Zhangzhou City, General Shi will say hello when he comes, and I will ensure that General Shi will have fun and have fun, and everything will go well!"

Shi Diwen smiled and waved his hand and said: "Being an official in the Haihan militia is not as idle as your Ming army, I have two or three days to officially take office, so I came to Zhangzhou to visit my old friends, and when I get busy after taking office, I probably don't have time!"

Although Xu Yuzhuo likes to eat, drink and have fun, his brain is not stupid at all, and he immediately heard Shi Diwen's voice: "Your army...... Is this going to be actionable?"

Shi Diwen sighed and said: "If you don't move, you can't do it, you also know that we have recently acquired the island of Taiwan, and if we want to develop this big island, we can't spread it out without getting 108,000 people over." Where did such a population come from? It is not yet expected that some of the migrants brought back from the north will be diverted to the past. But if we bring such two to three thousand people to the island every month, how long will it take to meet the requirements of the Executive Committee?"

Xu Yu blinked thoughtfully and said, "Then the executive committee means that you plan to roll up your sleeves yourself?"

"Isn't this the only way!" Shi Diwen said: "Just relying on dozens of ships from Fujian to the north every month, the number of immigrants transported back cannot meet the requirements of the executive committee, so the executive committee hopes that the Ministry of Shipping can open up a migration route to the north and put more than 100 large ships into it to transport immigrants to the south." ”

"Your sea capacity is convincing below, but if you want to organize such a large fleet to show off the market, there may be a lot of inconvenience at that time......," Xu Yuzhuo said while considering the words, as little as possible to anger Shi Diwen: "Not every local government is as willing to cooperate with you as the local government. ”

Shi Diwen nodded and said, "I also know a little bit about the situation you said. Some people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang don't want to see us in the local area, right? In the past, we also sent a lot of people to inquire about the news, but almost all of them came back. ”

Xu Yu replied: "All these things are caused by interests. General Shi is a person who understands, and he won't hide it from you, so he will tell you about the doorway in the middle. If you go to the local area on your own to negotiate trade, immigration, and so on, then naturally the people who were originally engaged in these trades will no longer be able to earn money from it, and if they can't earn money, the masters behind them will be unhappy. There are also people who have hands and eyes to the sky, and will try to keep you out of the door, whether it is a trivial matter, and if you really want to intervene on your own, you may encounter more drastic measures. ”

Although Xu Yuzhuo did not name names, he basically explained the actual situation in the north. In fact, since 1628, a small amount of industrial products exported by Haihan have flowed into the Jiangsu and Zhejiang markets after transshipment, but after so many years, Haihan's official business territory still stops in Fujian Province, and the richest Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas in the Ming Dynasty have not opened up the situation. This is not simply down to the Ministry of Commerce's ineffective work, they encountered much greater resistance in Jiangsu and Zhejiang than in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, originally in Fuzhou and Guangzhou to implement a relatively smooth way of investment promotion agent business, in Jiangsu and Zhejiang actually responded to very few, the main reason is that the upper echelons of the local market believe that Haihan to the agents of the profit margin is too little, far less than in the past they from Fujian to set their own prices of profit.

Originally, this situation could be resolved through negotiation through commercial negotiations, but perhaps Jiangsu and Zhejiang did not have a clear and intuitive understanding of Haihan's strength, but treated them as ordinary maritime businessmen, putting on a **** shelf, and were not willing to negotiate with Haihan on market issues. Although some people wanted to emulate the cooperation model of Xu Xinsu, Li Jifeng and Haihan in Fuguang and Guangzhou provinces, they were finally forced to give up such an attempt due to off-site pressure.

It would be easier to deal with a similar situation in the two provinces of Fuguang and Guangzhou, after all, Haihan has armed forces stationed in both provinces, and if necessary, there can be an armed parade to show off their muscles and deter those hillbillies who have eyes and do not know Mount Tai. However, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions are outside the sphere of influence of the Haihan Dynasty, and although the Executive Committee is dissatisfied with the local situation, it is also powerless to solve the problem through forceful means. Although the Fujian government has various interests with Haihan, officials, including Xu Xinsu, will not offend their colleagues in neighboring provinces for Haihan, and the most they can do is to show Haihan the way, and they will never easily intervene directly.

However, after Haihan took Taiwan and completely controlled the Fujian Strait, the Executive Committee no longer sat idly by and watched such a situation. There was a huge shortage of manpower needed to develop Taiwan, forcing the Executive Committee to once again put the scale of immigration from the north on its agenda. If Haihan wants to establish a transit base in the sea off Zhejiang and open up a sea route to Shandong, it is impossible to bypass the coastal areas of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Shi Diwen listened to Xu Yuchuang's tone, and it was clear that the local forces in Jiangsu and Zhejiang were likely to take tough measures against Haihan's intervention, so he immediately asked with a smile: "Are the drastic measures that General Xu said come from the official or the people?"

Xu Yuzhuo hesitated for a moment before responding: "Maybe they all, the interests are related, it's just a matter of which side is more convenient." ”

Shi Diwen continued to ask: "How are the sailors in Jiangsu and Zhejiang better than the sailors in Fujian?"

Xu Yu replied clumsily: "If it is said that when my father first joined the water division a few years ago, his strength may still be between the best, but now, I am afraid that the distance between them has been pulled dozens of streets." Although Jiangsu and Zhejiang are rich, the expenditure on the army has always been very limited, especially the sailors, most of which are still old ships in the Wanli period, and at most there are a few Franc cannons or copper hairs on the ship, which cannot be compared with the gunboats you built. ”

Shi Diwen pretended to suddenly realize and said: "It's true, otherwise, how could the pirates near Zhoushan be repeatedly banned, this root should be that the sailors of Jiangsu and Zhejiang are not strong!"

Xu Yuzhuo sighed and said, "It's not just not powerful...... To tell you the truth, among the Jiangsu-Zhejiang sailors, there are also people who collude with pirates and conspire with ill-gotten gains. When the government sent troops to kill pirates, they notified them in advance to avoid the edge. As soon as the officers and soldiers withdrew, they came back to kill, so they would continue to ban repeatedly. ”

The situation that Xu Yuzhuo said was consistent with the information collected by Haihan before, but when Shi Diwen continued to ask for details, Xu Yuzhuo refused to talk about the specific characters, but only warned Shi Diwen: "This pirate in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is actually similar to Fujian, many people are usually fishermen, and they may become pirates after going to sea, and some people are usually pirates, and they become maritime merchants when they go ashore, and they are called brothers and sisters in the government, and they have a close relationship." The reason why they did not form a local separatist force like Eighteen Zhi was just a leading figure like Zheng Zhilong. However, it is not an easy task to completely eradicate the local pirates, and if you plan to use force to solve the problem, you may not be able to achieve good results. ”

"Then what good advice does General Xu have?" Shi Diwen said in his heart that the problems Xu Yuzhuo said coincided with Qian Tiandun's worries, and Haihan, as an outsider, really couldn't find any better way to solve them than by force. Even if they know that there will be all kinds of problems, if there is no other way, it will be up to the military to bite the bullet.

Xu Yuzhuo was silent for a long time this time, and Shi Diwen did not urge, knowing that he might have something important to weigh clearly, so he took the tea cup and tasted the tea slowly and silently.

After a long time, Xu Yuchou spoke: "Actually, my father also had a lot of business contacts in Zhejiang in his early years, but later he entered the officialdom, and it was inconvenient to deal with some things in person...... In the past few years, many businesses have slowly stagnated, or have been taken over by locals, which is really a pity......"

Shi Diwen frowned, although he could understand every word Xu Yuzhuo said, he didn't quite understand what he meant in what he meant. But since Xu Yu opened his mouth, he still decided to continue listening patiently.

I heard Xu Yuzhuo continue: "My father's wish in the past two years, in addition to defeating Eighteen Zhi, is to restore the previous business scale, so that the Xu family can carry out maritime trade in every maritime frontier of the Ming Dynasty! In order to realize this wish, we need to rely on external help......"

Shi Diwen finally reacted when he heard this, daring Xu Yuclumsy to go around in such a big circle, he was changing his way and making conditions to himself. Having said all this, in fact, to put it simply, he wanted Haihan to take the Xu family with him in the plan to go north, so that the Xu family's business network could also expand northward with him.

As a high-ranking official in Fujian, Xu Xinsu is still like this, Shi Diwen believes that this also reflects from the side that the market in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is indeed not easy to enter, and it is obvious that the local real power people do not want to have a business with strong capital like Xu's enter, because this is very likely to affect their vested interests. Xu's is Haihan's largest agent in Fujian, and if it enters the Jiangsu and Zhejiang markets, then the merchants who distribute Haihan goods locally can do it without doing it. Although almost all of the Haihan goods sold in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are transferred from Fuzhou and Guangzhou provinces, the local marketing channels and market pricing are controlled by local powerful people.

As for what Xu Yuzhuo said about resuming the previous business scale, Shi Diwen didn't take it too seriously, this Xu Xinsu was also an armed smuggler in his early years, and the business he did was between legal and illegal, and even the pirate industry was somewhat touched. If he hadn't moved quickly to buy an official position in the Fujian government first, if Zheng Zhilong had been allowed to grab the head, maybe the big pirate who was doing evil in the Fujian Strait would have been replaced by him Xu Xinsu instead of Eighteen Zhi. If you want to say how many legal businesses and industries Xu Xinsu had in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in the past, Shi Diwen really doesn't believe it.

Xu Xinsu wanted to enter the market in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, but the local Haoqiang refused to let go, and he couldn't use his official status to suppress these people, but if the Haihan people who were not afraid of heaven and earth wanted to make a move, then they could indeed choose the opportunity to take this tailwind boat. After all, Xu Xinsu and his henchmen knew very well what the strength of the Haihan people was, as long as they could help the Haihan people achieve their desired goals, the Xu family's business could also follow in the footsteps of the Haihan and expand northward, and this mutual aid transaction was worth taking a risk for the Xu family.